Fresh Start: New York's Cafe Monopol

The entrepreneurial Roth family, cousins to my Hungarian-born great-grandpa Moritz Farkas, sought a fresh start after leaving Hungary for opportunities in New York City at the turn of the 20th century.

Cafe Monopol on Second Avenue in NYC

Peter Roth (1872-1956) and his brother-in-law Peter Stern, with two other partners, owned and operated the Viennese-style restaurant Cafe Monopol at 145 Second Avenue in Manhattan.
They paid $5 to organize as a corporation in 1913 (shown at left).

Peter and his wife had put in $10,000 in funding during the previous year, according to incorporation documents. The incorporation process probably formalized family shares in the restaurant corporation.

Peter had headed the Cafe Monopol since at least 1910. That's the year he told the US Census he was the "keeper" of this restaurant, which was also listed in the 1910 New York city directory. He learned the business from the ground up, listing "waiter" as his occupation in the 1900 Census (when he lived only a few blocks from his future business).

I just found an ad for Cafe Monopol on November 21, 1908, saying "Hungarian music, Vienna Restaurant" at the 2d Avenue address. And other early ads in New York Evening Telegram for the Cafe Monopol said it featured "a concert every evening." The place must have been hopping at dinnertime!

A Cafe Monopol in Berlin and Another in New York

Reading the 2018 book, A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture by Shachar M. Pinsker, I was pleased to find the Roths' Cafe Monopol in New York briefly mentioned (p. 228). Much more space was devoted to the far better-known Cafe Monopol in Berlin, then a gathering place for Zionists (see pages 167+ of the book). Surely my Roth ancestors from Hungary would have been aware of the Berlin cafe's fame when naming their New York cafe.

In New York City, the entire Second Avenue neighborhood around Cafe Monopol was home to a rich brew of Jewish culture, including the Yiddish Art Theatre and the National Theatre. In the 1940s, a cousin of my Roth and Farkas ancestors acted in New York's Yiddish theater for a time!

A Star's Fresh Start at the Cafe Monopol

I just found out that a really big star got her fresh start at the Cafe Monopol more than a century ago.

Sonya Kalish, the star's original name, was a baby when her family settled in Hartford, CT after leaving Tulchin, Ukraine. She married Louis Tuck and was known as Sophie Tuck.

But Sophie was eager to sing, and so she took herself off to New York City to break into show business. Her money was running out when she approached the proprietor of Cafe Monopol and offered to (literally) sing for her supper.

When he asked her name, she made up a variation of her married name on the spot: Sophie Tucker. 

That's how Sonya Kalish became Sophie Tucker ("The last of the red-hot mamas"), and got a fresh start at the Cafe Monopol on Second Avenue in New York City!

(My sources: Sophie's biography, "Some of These Days," and the Museum of the City of New York.)

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Many thanks to Amy Johnson Crow for this first #52Ancestors prompt of 2020.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #15: The Roth Family, Entrepreneurs

The Roth family from Vasarosnameny, Hungary--cousins on my mother's side--had an entrepreneurial streak. Adolf Roth, one of several sons of Salomon Roth, arrived in 1897, established himself, and then helped two of his brothers come to New York. Adolf owned a necktie factory in Manhattan (he said he was a "neckwear contractor"). That factory provided work for many of the Roths and relatives as they arrived from Hungary. My grandma sewed fine silk ties for Adolf, for instance. Bela Roth, another of Salomon's sons, arrived in 1907 and he seems to have worked in his brother Adolf's factory.

Josef Roth, a brother or cousin of Bela and Adolf, had two sons, Emil and Peter Roth, who both went into the restaurant business.

From the New York Call, January 6, 1914

• Peter Roth (1872?-1956) co-owned the Viennese-style restaurant Cafe Monopol at 145 Second Avenue in Manhattan, with his brother-in-law Peter Stern and others (see incorporation note, above, from 1915 publication Polk's New York Copartnership and Corporation Directory, p. 730). The little restaurant ad, directly above, shows my Roth cousin in business 100 years ago!
• Emil Roth (1887-1965) worked at the Rossoff Restaurant at 152 West 44th Street in Manhattan.

Now all of the above was probably common knowledge in the family, but not passed down to later generations. It took days to piece the info together from passport applications, Census data, obituaries, and--most fun of all--working with two (probable) cousins, one in NY and one in Maryland, who were way ahead of me in tracing our Roth family tree.

Plus I've just connected with another delightful cousin from the Roth family! She tells me that her father (a son of Bela Roth) was highly entrepreneurial. During the summer, he and a brother would drive city dwellers from New York to vacation spots in the Catskills. At the end of the summer, they sold their "cab" and made good money from the sale. Eventually, that led to her father going into the used car business and, ultimately, owning a new car franchise that remains in the family today.